First, it is important to keep in mind the politics of budgeting, communication, board relations, and public perception – basically the environment that administrators live in. I am not saying that politics should drive decisions, but I am advocating that it is always good to keep the politics in mind – I guarantee that it is in the mind of administrators. A good administrator will do what is right regardless of the politics, but may need to frame conversations, information, and communication in a way that will capitalize on the environment they are in and enable future risks. Helping your administrator think/talk through some of this ahead of time can pay big dividends. This is probably an expansion of #6 in Dr. McLeod’s list.

Second, I think that thinking big and starting small can get your foot in the door. Starting with one teacher, one classroom, one grade level, one department, etc, may change the investment enough to convince someone to take a risk. Once you can demonstrate success, you can leverage that success to expand.

Third, encourage the administration to involve the school board in investigations and education about current trends. We recently hosted an Executive Briefing from a tech company and after seeing what our children could/should be doing in schools, the board made it clear that they felt we needed to move in a particular direction. All of a sudden budgets and decisions became much easier.

Fourth, and I am sure that this goes without saying, but don’t suggest buying stuff without budgeting for staff development. Education has made this mistake over and over again, and we have all seen state of the art technology either sitting idle or being used for low-level, technology-on-the-side applications. If technology is going to be a disruptive innovation (ala Clayton Christensen’s “Disrupting Class”), we need people with high level skills using it.

Last, budgeting for anything can be looked at in many ways. The first and most traditional is strictly as expenses and revenues. If a mindset change can happen so the spending side of budgeting is thought of in terms of trade-offs, i.e. we are trading this amount of money for this service, or this outcome, etc, it changes conversations from “costs” to “investments” and that can be significant.

Keep up the great work!

Ah, that is the issue right there and I believe what he was referring to. You see if you can successfully get technology integrated these “problems” will be helped. So too often time is spent on trying to put out the fires and not preventing them. If I were an Administrator, the only way I would work for a school district is to tell them, “Hey, it is going to take a couple years to get the boat turned around, but I can promise you that after I get the boat turned around, scores will improve steadily and consistently, but don’t expect scores to improve this year or the next.”

The focus should be on technology integration to help solve these day to day problems. As a person who worked in Silicon Valley I can tell you that technology allows you to do two main things. 1) Spend less time on putting out fires because it actually prevents them. 2) Allows more efficient use of your time to explore other items of interest. Case in point. If teachers can use technology successfully to facilitate in the classroom, they can spend more time helping students explore individually. The children benefit and the teacher benefits!

It is a shame technology used so little in the classroom, just think if a student knows how to conduct internet searches effectively what they can explore, as almost everything we know is on the web. My two and a half year old knows that his Dad (when he doesn’t know the answer) goes straight to the internet to find it.

My purpose in this life is to “Facilitate success. Help them gain the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to move toward the desired destination.”

I’m not here to defend administrators, but…

It may not necessarily be that they are trying to solve the “wrong” problem, but that way too much of their energy is focused elsewhere.
For increasing scores of schools, the problems and demands of being a School In Need of Assistance takes up virtually ALL of an administrator’s time and energy. When the entire focus is upon math and reading test scores, I’m seeing that other important areas like technology and information literacy skills are slipping into the background.
BF

Any ideas on how to focus on 2, 3, 4, and 6? How to create that “felt need to learn” on the part of the administrators? Specifically, the part where we must admit that “we aren’t keeping up?”

As I was reading and rereading the original post, I was mentally applying it in the context of (elementary) school librarians. We are in a position to be of much value to our building principals and your 7 points are so vital.

What you replied, Doug, hits home. I have borrowed this philosophy of one of my building principals: don’t complain about something unless you have a viable solution to suggest. Since adopting this mantra, I have begun to be more productive/proactive in seeking change and improvements.

Sometimes, however, to goes beyond the “power” of the building principal when others “higher up” have the real power to make final decisions. Then I wonder if I must follow the “chain of command”.

BF